Timeline for What is the accepted stance on using "they" in a singular form?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 16, 2019 at 20:56 | comment | added | LarsH | My comment was unclear. I meant it was a disagreement semantically (at most) rather than grammatically. | |
| Oct 16, 2019 at 16:02 | comment | added | Robusto | @LarsH: It can be a number disagreement and a semantic disagreement at the same time. Nevertheless, those who promote singular they would argue that neither disagreement exists, because of the forced interpretation of a singular condition for the pronoun. | |
| Oct 16, 2019 at 15:36 | comment | added | LarsH | "When using the plural third-person pronoun to refer to a single person, grammatically you are introducing a disagreement in number." If you're treating they as a plural pronoun, I think this would be best understood as a semantic disagreement. Since the referent may not be explicit at all, there can't be a grammatical disagreement. | |
| Jan 23, 2015 at 0:46 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | When using the plural second-person pronoun to refer to a single person, you are also introducing a disagreement in number. Wert thou so sorely vexed by this "disagreement in number", surely thou wouldst here another pronoun have used. :) | |
| Dec 15, 2010 at 20:53 | comment | added | Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 | Singular they is much older than the recent changes to eradicate gender-neutral he. It is not technically wrong. It only appears wrong if you constrain they to mean multiple people; if you look at its usage over the last few centuries you'll see that's not the case. | |
| Dec 15, 2010 at 19:22 | comment | added | Robusto | @Martha: Good point. | |
| Dec 15, 2010 at 18:43 | comment | added | Marthaª | @Robusto: If I were writing about cupboards, plates, and sandwiches, I'd probably use "you", thereby avoiding both stilted-ness and the abomination of singular they. | |
| Dec 15, 2010 at 18:09 | comment | added | Robusto | @ShreevatsaR: Yeah, but that's a different kind of trap. "If one were to look in the cupboard, one would find plates, and then one could take one of the plates and make oneself a sandwich. One might find that such a sandwich would satisfy one's hunger quite admirably." It all gets to sounding very boring and stilted in some way. | |
| Dec 15, 2010 at 17:26 | comment | added | ShreevatsaR | Of course, you can often work around the issue, by writing "If one were to you look in the cupboard, one would find the plates" or "If you were to look in the cupboard, you would find the plates", etc. :-) | |
| Dec 15, 2010 at 17:15 | vote | accept | dan_waterworth | ||
| Sep 12, 2012 at 4:22 | |||||
| Dec 15, 2010 at 17:11 | history | answered | Robusto | CC BY-SA 2.5 |